Transcript
A (0:00)
Sam.
B (0:34)
Hi everyone, this is Jess and Dylan from the Radical AI Podcast. You might have noticed it's been a little while since we've posted a new episode. We wanted to apologize for the radio silence and also come on here to share some news. Unfortunately, the Radical AI Podcast is coming to an end.
A (0:57)
Well, folks, this is it. This is the last episode of the Radical AI Podcast after three years, over three years of this passion project of ours. And we are so grateful for all of you listeners. And it's sad for us at the end of the day, really just schedules PhD life, graduation coming up for the two of us from our PhD programs, other career aspirations and other life things got in the way. And we have kept going back and forth about different ways that we could continue. But we think the best and most respectful thing to do with the podcast is to leave it as it is. This awesome time capsule of three years of conversations with amazing people who have touched our lives in so many ways, ways we will never have words to say how grateful we are for the folks that we have had on the show that have come on the show. And throughout this short little minisode, as we used to call them, we'll talk a bit more about all of that gratitude because there's, there's so much to say. But as we get this little minisode started, I just wanted to take us all back to the beginning. Some of you might have heard this story before, but I bet a lot of you have not, since I think we only shared it in the first, like, what, three episodes or something. This project started back at the FACT conference, back in, what was it? I think it was early 2000 and I had gone there on a whim. I was, I think, the only religious studies PhD student there. It was in Barcelona. And so I found some funding and I said, okay, I'm going to Barcelona. And I went and I was jet lagged the entire week. I did not make nearly as much of the conference as I wanted to, but I made the most important session, which was the one in which I met Jess. It was one of the last sessions of the conference and it was the one where people who didn't necessarily have a published paper yet or earlier career students could get up and introduce themselves and give a quick presentation about what they study. And I was sitting there and I was just like listening. I think I was sending an email and someone gets up and introduces themselves and I'm like, oh, that, that sounds nice. Oh, they study artificial intelligence. Ethics. Oh, looking at ethics, Computer science. Great. And then they mentioned that they're at the University of Colorado Boulder. And I said, oh, I live in Denver. This, this seems like it could be fun to meet for, you know, to talk about this stuff. At the time, I was, you know, trying to figure out what's next for my career. Religious studies was a calling for me, but I also wanted to do more, more tech, More tech stuff. And so afterwards I introduced myself and I said, hey, I'm Dylan. And she said, and obviously, you know where this is going, like, hi, I'm Jess. And I was like, oh, hey, would you want to, like, hang out when we get back? And so I can like, pick your brain about all the cool research that you're doing. And at the time, I think what we were, we were both either first year or second year students in our respective program. I think maybe first year students at the time. And it's. We got back, right? And we grab a, we grabbed a drink in Boulder. And I said, oh, well, I've been, I've been running this, this podcast thing through my previous institution, through my institution. But like, you know, there's some things that are really great about it, some things that could be better, but like, I really want to do something, like, really, really different. And Jess was like, yes. And I was like, what? And she was like, yes, yeah, let's do that. I was like, okay, well, I have some ideas. And so then we started, you know, meeting and talking and just a few months later, this whole thing was birthed in the beginning of the. The pandemic. And it changed our lives, you know, changed our lives forever, changed our careers. But that I just wanted to, I guess, set the stage of. That was the beginning of the Radical AI Podcast was this random chance meeting of a Religious Studies PhD student in Denver and an AI Computer Science Ethics student in Boulder, meeting in Barcelona at the fact basically Fairness Conference, thinking about ethics together and independently thinking about how we could change the world to lift up different voices in ethics and in a I ethics and you know, it became responsible technology. But you know, what a journey it's been and we'll talk a little bit about that right now.
